


Backstage

by Cosmic_Biscuit



Category: Avengers (Comic)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-11-17
Updated: 2011-11-17
Packaged: 2017-10-26 05:10:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,161
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/279054
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cosmic_Biscuit/pseuds/Cosmic_Biscuit
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Skrulls won, but the former Wasp, hidden away in a tower, can't accept the new status quo. Especially not when it comes wearing a familiar face.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Backstage

**Author's Note:**

> Based somewhat vaguely on _What If: Secret Invasion_. Also includes mentions of events in _Avengers Forever_ , even though the powers that be no longer consider that 616 canon.

She kept her breathing slow as she rested her forehead against the cool glass of the floor-length windows, eyes closed to the lights and movement of the city below. She couldn't close her ears, though, and even though she'd turned off the television hours ago, she could still hear the baptismal announcements being made through the walls from other residents' stations. At all hours. It was almost maddening, especially on the rare occasions that she heard a friend's name being announced, always during daylight hours. The Skrulls enjoyed the publicity of that, and there was always that sickening worry, that one day someone would come up who-

She hadn't expected him back for another two hours at least, and didn't hear the door click open and closed, so when fingertips brushed up her arm, she jumped, barely managing to restrain herself from spinning around to swing at his head. The broken arm she'd gotten the last time she'd tried that had made her learn her lesson, and was just one more _reminder_ of whom she was really dealing with.

"You should be down there," he breathed against the curve of her ear, and she involuntarily shuddered at the familiar voice and caress as he followed the hinted command with the other hand sliding around her hip.

"We've been over it a hundred times already," she replied, forcing herself to hold still, to keep her voice even despite the welling frustration at the old argument. "I'm not doing it."

He made a dismissive noise, the hand at her arm coming up to brush fingers through her hair. "It's gotten longer. And you will eventually."

"I don't trust the people around here with scissors. And if that's what you want, you should have just picked one to begin with." It slipped out before she could catch herself this time. His fingers tightened painfully in her hair, and before she could take the insult back, she found herself shoved against the glass hard enough that she swore she heard the pane crack. A shift in her hair and the feeling of the air changing in the room told her all she needed to know, and even though she couldn't turn her head, it wasn't necessary. " _He_ never tried that tactic on me," she said, straining to push herself away from the glass, even though it was unlikely with him putting the extra weight of the height change on her.

"Perhaps I _should_ have, considering you've been a consummate pain in the ass since before we even married," he snarled in reply, and she gritted her teeth. Always 'I', never 'He'. Aside from force, it was the bastard's favorite wearing down ploy. "Clearly you didn't learn well enough from the _other_ lessons."

The grip in her hair clenched tighter, then released, and she quickly pushed away from the glass before he got it into his head to throw her _through_ it. Before, she would have thought it an overblown idea, but these past months had taught her to be wary of _everything_ , especially when the look on his face as she turned didn't disabuse her of the notion he might very well do it. He didn't move, however. Just kept staring at -no, _through_ , she amended once she looked a little closer- her as she cautiously edged away from the windows. First instinct was to ask what the hell his problem was, but that expression made her keep her mouth shut. Instead she kept moving, making sure she would at least be well out of arm's reach.

After a long, tense minute, he seemed to finally snap out of whatever trance he'd gone into, eyes going colder as he put a hand into his pocket. "You're staying in here tonight," he said, and she felt the click and hum of the collar around her neck and the bands around her wrists being turned up. She bit her tongue at the familiar, but still uncomfortable prickle against her skin, and didn't let out the breath she was holding until he had stalked out.

Once she was well and sure she was alone, she sank back against the wall, inhaling deeply as she sat down and rested her head against her knees. After a few long minutes of piecing her nerves back together, the sound of another baptismal announcement filtering through the wall behind her made her heave herself to her feet and reach for the nightstand drawer. If there was any one good thing about their fights, it was that she knew he at least didn't hold true to Hank's post-argument habits. He wouldn't be back until morning at the earliest, and that made her feel a little safer about putting in the plugs to block out those damned broadcasts.

Finally getting some desperately-needed quiet, she located the notebook she'd hidden in what used to be a delivery panel when the Four had still owned and run this building. She bit her lip against a brief flash of memory before she curled up on the bed to add this new incident to her notes, then flipped a few pages to her list.

This was always even harder than keeping track of his behavior, but she closed her eyes and tried to recall all the familiar names she'd heard in the announcements during the day. Barnes. She wrote him down, and put a small asterisk for 'imposter' beside the name. She'd only met the man personally once or twice, but Steve had been adamant in the times she'd heard him talk of his former partner. The Winter Soldier had been traumatizing. Barnes never would have willingly allowed alteration on himself again, especially not to this level. It couldn't have really been him taking the plunge.

At least she hoped not. She'd been wrong before, and still remembered that stomach drop when she'd learned that Melissa had been baptized for real. Even after Jack had died and Genis had vanished and everything had gone to hell between her and Hank and everyone in general, there'd still been some tiny -stupid- naive hope that a future she barely remembered would be the one to come, not this mess. Songbird had finished out her time on the Thunderbolts. They'd become friends after that shared mission in the Savage Land. She'd been ready to vouch for Melissa's entry into the Avengers and hopefully things would go back on track-

Suddenly aware that her eyes were wet, she put the pen down and scrubbed at them with the heel of her hand. Stupid. She'd done this to herself too many times now, and she wasn't going to do it again. No more what could have beens, no more dwelling. They'd _all_ fucked this up, and now they were having to put up with the consequences. Shaking her head to clear it, she finished marking down the new names on the list and tucked her notebook back into the broken delivery chute. As she moved to close the wall panel back up to hide it, her hand knocked against the small box she'd also put there for safekeeping, and she eyed it.

She still remembered how horrible Tony had looked the last time they'd crossed paths. Before he'd vanished off the face of the Earth, and she'd been locked here permanently with a bogus recluse story. She took the box out and noticed the smell of alcohol still lingered faintly on the leather as she fingered the metal clasp. God, he'd been drunk. Even worse than the one time she'd gone along with Steve to confront him years ago. She couldn't blame him, though. As fucked up as everything was now, _she'd_ been tempted to try self medication, and that was without the history he'd had. Box in hand, she took a seat on the bed and flipped the lid open to reveal a small needle, similar to the one she'd been given before she'd learned that the one offering it wasn't who he seemed.

 _"It wasn't a stabilizing agent he gave you. Any of us whose abilities they can screw with, they're turning into weapons in case the resistance gets too big."_

She closed her eyes, then closed the box. Before, she would have trusted Tony implicitly as well. Now, she couldn't be sure of anything or anyone, and for all she knew, he'd just been another Skrull and had handed her poison. But she let out a breath as she got up and put the box back anyway, some instinct refusing to let her simply throw it away.

"Damn," she murmured under her breath as she rubbed her eyes. Part of her really wanted to continue her search before going to bed, just to make sure she'd covered all her bases for the day, but she could still feel the prickly crackle of the collar around her throat. Deciding she would do it first thing in the morning instead, she shed the outer robe and curled up in bed.

 

***

 

She didn't realize she'd forgotten to remove the plugs until she groggily roused to the muffled sound of her alarm's urgent beeping. Then bolted awake and quickly took them out to hide them before anyone came in. Jesus, she'd either been more tired than she had estimated, or she was just slipping, she thought as she got up to go shower. A few weeks ago, she wouldn't have made a mistake like that.

Or like leaving the bathroom door unlocked, she amended later with a small note of alarm when she was pulled out from under the water.

"You're up late," he rumbled against her throat, and she fought down the urge to push him away and reach for a towel.

"I set the alarm later," she lied. "It's not like I have anywhere to be."

He drew back, eyeing her with a faint note of suspicion, then, just as she was about to balk and flee, reached out to touch her cheek in an oddly affectionate, familiar gesture. Confused by the sudden change, she didn't jerk away when he leaned in and kissed her lightly. That seemed to meet with some kind of approval, because she heard a faint click and felt the power of her restraints dim considerably.

When he pressed her back against the glass of the shower door, however, one fear overruled another, and she put her hands up to shove him off.

All the traces of her former partner in his expression vanished, replaced by a predatory glare as he caught her wrists in a tight grip. "Don't fight me."

"Let go," she replied flatly, trying to pull out of his hold.

" _Janet-_ "

"Get away!" She twisted enough to wrench free, and when he tried to grab her again, belted him hard across the face to make him back up.

 _Big mistake,_ a small voice in the back of her head warned, the last incident flashing briefly in her mind right before he lunged, both of them falling into the shower stall. Pain exploded in her skull as they hit the tile, and her vision went starry briefly before everything blacked out.

 

***

 

When she weakly cracked her eyes open again, head throbbing unmercifully, she found herself lying back in her bed and wrapped in a clean robe. With a weak groan, she started to roll over to sit up, only to curl up when she got a sharp cramp in her stomach and lower body in the process. Her fingers clenched in the bedding as the pain brought with it an ice-water shot along her nerves.

He wouldn't have. Even as much of a bastard as he'd been, surely he-

Swallowing back the sudden dizzying need to throw up, she staggered to her feet against the pain and headed desperately for the bathroom.

No bruises. No blood.

That didn't prove or disprove anything, though, and she clutched at the sink to keep her balance as she struggled to breathe slow and deep. Son of a- If he had- If he _had_ -

Her jaw clenched, and she pushed herself away from the sink, forcing herself to straighten as she went to get clothing. She'd been planning to just continue her search before. She was damn well going to make sure she _ended_ it this time, before he got the chance to _ever_ corner her again. Shedding the robe and throwing it almost spitefully into a corner, she dressed and checked to make sure her collar was still turned down, before going back to the hiding spot in the wall. She tucked her notebook into her clothing, nestled into the small of her back.

As she turned to go out, she glanced at the box still waiting there, then reached out and flipped the catch, taking out the small needle. Making sure it was capped, she put it in a pocket, then keyed herself out of the apartment.

 

***

 

Like the needle she carried, her belief that the real Hank was being kept somewhere in the building had originally been nothing more than a gut feeling. But observation had made that niggling grow into a certainty. The Skrulls had started releasing the "replaced" as a so-called gesture of good faith towards humankind, but from what she'd seen, the only ones who'd been let go were the ones whose replacements didn't need to hide anymore. Like Spider-Woman. Her captor, on the other hand, was still feigning being a baptized human as part of a spin campaign. Which meant he still had to be keeping the real thing.

More than that, if the Skrull really _did_ have as much of Hank's memory as he claimed to, he would have had to remember Costa Verde and what Kulan Gath's magic had done to him. The Skrull was more a paranoid bastard than Hank had ever been at his worst. Surely the memory of 'his' separate selves nearly dying would have provoked him enough to make sure his human counterpart was around in case of a future instability.

At least, she hoped so.

No one, human or Skrull, so much as glanced at her as she walked through the halls, and that suited her just fine. If there was _any_ one thing that made her captor tolerable, it was the fact that being marked as 'his' meant that those who recognized her thought she was just another convert, and those who didn't, didn't care. It made searching so much easier, especially when she could pretend she'd just wandered into restraint-restricted areas by accident with no one to show her where to avoid.

Like right now, she thought, punching the elevator one floor lower than the one she'd gone through two days ago. Originally, her notions of villain theatrics had made her go to the lowest levels first. But those turned out to still hold old experiments of Reed's that she -and the Skrulls, apparently- didn't want to deal with. So she'd just started working her way from the top floor down. Not the most efficient way, sure, but at least it let her be thorough.

She could already feel a hum against her skin as the elevator doors opened, and she fought down a shiver. That level of security so close to the entrance was going to hurt like hell, but was also very promising. Bracing herself, she stepped off the elevator and headed for the first door.

It was a very good thing that the restraint devices were the only security the Skrulls bothered with anymore, she thought as she tried to heave herself to her feet after half an hour and four rooms. The only thing that could have possibly been worse than having to search this way would have been being caught already.

Also, if she ever saw Reed again, she was going to _deck_ him one for the layout of the floor. _Hard_. Having to fight her way through the force fields of one room to get to the next was just goddamn _cruel_. Disoriented and hurting like hell, she propped herself against the wall as she caught her breath, digging up the will to press on. Okay. She could do this. Inhaling a deep rush of air to clear her head, she braced herself and punched the panel for the door before getting up a running start.

The speed didn't help, and she arched in a howl of pain as her restraints and the air around her lit up in the strongest burst yet. Her body must have ended up pressing on desperately without her mind catching up, because the next thing she was aware of was curling into a ball on the metal floor, fingers trying to dig into the panels beneath her as residual spasms shuddered through her muscles. Chest throbbing and throat burning, she struggled not to throw up, and to keep breathing. She could distantly feel a strange heat against her skin, and some still functioning part of her mind realized the restraints had to have burned in by now. Not important. Breathing was important. Making sure her pulse was still going was important.

It was still the main focus of what coherent thought she had when she blacked out.

Coming back around was another painful experience, and she pressed a shaking hand to her chest and made a shuddering cough before slowly trying to sit up. Then froze at the sight in front of her.

"Goddamn," she rasped, coughing again as she slowly staggered to her feet.

Like every other laboratory she'd come across, the place had been heavily modified from anything she remembered of Reed's work. _Un_ like the others, which were entirely alien to her, this was... almost an exact copy of the old laboratory Hank had constructed when he'd first become Yellowjacket. There was some tech she didn't recognize, and that strange tank in the center of the floor, but otherwise...

Maybe she'd been more on target with the paranoia assumption than she'd thought.

The computer controls were interesting, but she went to investigate the tank first, and jumped in surprise when a floor panel suddenly flashed beneath her as she stepped on it. The metal of the tank actually _rippled_ in response, which got her curiosity up. Maybe... She put her full weight in the exact same spot, and sucked in a sharp breath when the protective hologram of metal vanished, revealing a fluid-filled glass chamber with-

Biting her tongue and forcing herself not to get so excited that she did something stupid, she cautiously approached the tank holding her former husband. Seeing it now, she remembered the chamber he'd been held in by his other self after Costa Verde. Same spot. Like everything else in the lab. It had to be the real one. _Had_ to. Now the question was: how did she get him out? Even though this whole setup was familiar, even though he thought she was an idiot who wouldn't have even made it this far, surely the Skrull wouldn't have used the same shutdown codes for the tank that Yellowjacket had.

She decided she'd better make absolutely _sure_ of that, though. She didn't know how long she'd been unconscious, or when he would be coming down here again, so the faster she could knock out incorrect options, the better. Unsteadily crouching by the tank's controls, she carefully keyed in the access sequence, and...

Nothing.

Well, at least she had that out of the way, she thought with a tiny note of annoyance. On to trying other things. As she started to straighten back up, though, her fingers accidentally brushed feather-light against the glass of the chamber. She clamped her hands over her ears as alarms suddenly began to screech. How the _hell_ \- She couldn't have _possibly-_

Gritting her teeth and trying to block out the noise, she noticed a heavy-looking metal lever and headed towards that. No time to try anything else complex. She had to get him out of here _now_ before the alarms brought guards. Or worse. Grabbing the handle, she threw her weight against the bar as hard as she could, snapping it free from its base. Hoping to God she still had enough strength left after the five forcefields, she hefted the lever like a bat and swung full-force at the glass chamber.

The shattering glass and flood of chemicals that spilled onto the floor was _most_ satisfying, and, ignoring any possibility that it could soak through her clothing, she tossed the lever aside and went to start disconnecting needles and wires. "Hank? _Hank_. Come on, Blue Eyes, you've got to-"

A warning bell went off in her head, and she automatically grabbed the syringe out of her pocket as she turned, only for it to be sent flying as _she_ was sent into the wall. Head ringing, she blindly tossed a retaliation punch just before hands locked around her throat.

"You _just_ couldn't fucking leave well enough alone," the Skrull snarled in a cold rage as his hold tightened, cutting off her air. She made a choked cry of pain as she felt the collar buckle and begin digging into the burns, instinctively clawing at his arms to try and force him to let go. It only made him squeeze harder, and as black spots began crowding her vision, panic kicked in. Shit, she couldn't die _here_ after making it this far. Lashing out in desperation, she was rewarded with a familiar tingling in her arm and a howl of pain as her assailant's grip loosened just enough for her to manage a deep gulp of air.

She hit him with another stinger blast, but the Skrull still didn't back off. Just as she was about to try again, he suddenly jerked away completely and she dropped to the floor, coughing. The sight in front of her when her vision cleared managed to be both horrifying and a huge relief; the Skrull striking out at something she couldn't see before collapsing into a convulsive huddle with a scream, the flesh on his back seeming to _bubble_.

And standing behind him with the now-empty needle she'd lost, was a soaked and extremely disoriented Hank.

"Jan? What the _hell-_ "

"No time," she managed to wheeze, hefting herself up and past the sick Skrull to grab him by the arm. The warping seemed to have damaged the collar enough to let her shrink as well as attack, and he automatically followed suit, both of them diving under a computer bank to safety. Finding their way out from here was going to be a bitch, but at this point, anything was better than being caught. As they made their way through the jungle of wires, she glanced back and noticed other Skrulls picking her now-unconscious captor up. Shaking her head, she put it out of her mind.

Urgency and a need to stay hidden forced them to press on in silence, and it was over an hour before they tumbled through a loose panel into one of the old repair stations for the building. "Ow," she muttered, picking herself up off the floor, before finally scrutinizing her ex-husband. "Are you okay? I didn't know how else to disconnect-"

Hank stared at her incredulously. "Am _I_ okay? _I'm_ not the one who looks like she went three rounds with a lightning god."

It was hard not to flinch when he crouched down so close -' _the real one'_ , she mentally chanted- but she managed to hold still, even at the small burn in her neck when he touched the collar and accidentally pressed it against her skin a little.

"Christ," he said under his breath as he studied it. "It should break apart easily enough, it's been so warped, but we'll need to find something to bind up your neck before infection really gets a chance to set in."

"Just get it off for now. We'll deal with it once we get out of the building."

That got a concerned glance that she was more than a little grateful to see, but he nodded, and she bit back a hiss of pain as he cracked the collar open and carefully removed it. "The wrist bands?"

"Later. They can't do anything without the collar anyway."

He helped her to her feet, and they split up to search for a way out. He finally located some sort of ladder tunnel behind a wall panel. It ended up leading them down into the sewers, which wasn't going to do a damn thing for her neck injuries, but at least it gave them more space between them and anyone looking for them.

 

***

 

She finally had to stop, her legs refusing to hold her anymore, and he wasn't looking in much better shape as he sat down beside her on a ledge away from the water. "I think we're far enough away we can start looking towards heading topside. We'll have to find disguises, though."

"Since we're talking going into hiding, I suppose this is as good a time as any to reiterate my question of what the hell is going on."

She couldn't help a small snort of laughter in response to the dry tone. "It's... well... the shortest version is that big green aliens took over the world. They've been using a fake you as a figurehead for the human conversion effort."

He blinked at her. "Skrulls? _Seriously?_ But I thought they were-" He paused, then shook his head, still a little disbelieving. "And why _me?_ I mean, surely there are others who-"

"They had invasion agents planted as imposters all over the place. He was the one who announced the final stages of the takeover plan, so once the Queen revealed herself and the Skrulls were in charge, they claimed he wasn't really a Skrull, but a human who'd been converted over to their way of thinking. Which is how they kicked off the baptisms. They've been adding Skrull-DNA-Infused humans to their numbers ever since."

"Great," he muttered, scrubbing a hand over his face in frustration, and she couldn't particularly blame him. As long as the fake was still running around, it was just one more mark against _him_. "How long?"

"What's the last thing you remember before waking up in that lab?"

He looked at the water swishing by under them, thinking, then flinched and looked away. "The fight in Oxford."

It took her a second to realize what he meant, then she bit her lip as she looked down. "Oh. It was her, wasn't it?" He nodded, but before he could say anything, she shook her head slowly. "No blaming. We both screwed that one up badly," she said, in an echo of the pep talk she'd given herself the night before. "We've both _been_ screwing up. _Everybody's_ been screwing up. So no more pointing fingers."

A faint, tired smile crossed his mouth when she gave his hand a small squeeze. "Fair enough. Feel like moving again?"

"Not really," she admitted. "But we probably should get out of here before anything else happens."

 

***

 

When they climbed out of the sewers, they found themselves in a darkened alley, and it was well past sundown. _Good_. The more things they had on their side, the better. Especially since everything had changed enough that picking out definite markers from here wasn't exactly easy. "Okay, clothing and bandages first. Then food," she added as her stomach made its presence known. He found a coat that would cover the suit he'd been stuffed into for the glass chamber, and they headed out, looking for supplies.

"That's lucky," he said quietly when they happened to come across one of her old stores, and she had to agree. If she were being honest with herself, she'd been expecting everything to have been torn down by now, what with the company having shut down since her imprisonment.

Well, maybe not torn down, but definitely abandoned at least, she decided when an alarm didn't even go off in response to Hank breaking the window of the back door so they could get in. It felt _weird_ essentially having to steal from herself, but she shook off the feeling as they pilfered clothing and the few employee first aid kits. A tiny part of her was mildly annoyed that there was so _much_ to be found, but she was mostly grateful. Especially for the black plastic stretched over the windows that kept them hidden as they moved about.

Hank was in the middle of cleaning and bandaging her neck when she suddenly stiffened. "Oh, my God."

"What? Did I hurt you? Are you-"

"No... No, I'm fine. I just... If you were taken in _Oxford_ , then you never... Oh, God, you didn't do any- Jesus, you weren't here for _any_ of it."

He eyed her warily, clearly unsure whether he wanted to know the answer to what he was about to ask or not. "Here for any of _what?_ "

She hesitated, biting her lip, then rubbed her eyes, took a deep breath, and began to spill all of it. Wanda's final reality warping breakdown. The explosion in Connecticut and the super human war that had blown out of control, with the fake him as one of the leaders of it. The revelation of the invasion and how it had been so entrenched that no one could halt it. How the governments had fallen one by one except for Wakanda. It all came in a torrent, and when she finally finished, he was staring at her in stunned shock, slumped back in his chair.

"I... Goddamn. Bill's _gone_? _Steve's_ gone? And people think I-" He shakily raked a hand through his hair, getting himself back together. "And Reed? Tony? They were actually involved in all this?"

"I don't know," she admitted. "Everything's confusing as hell. The Skrulls say the Steve that died was the real one, what few resistance groups are out there claim it was a trick to further destabilize the cape groups. No telling what the situation with Reed is."

"And Tony?"

"I crossed paths with him before he went into hiding and his company was seized. Whether it was the real him the entire time, or he'd escaped, or it was a fake still... I can't say for sure. But any way it went, this really worked him over. He was completely plastered, and just stuck around long enough to shove a box with a syringe in it at me, give me some kind of cryptic warning that I was being turned into a weapon, and then vanish."

He nodded weakly, apparently still trying to digest all of it, then stiffened. "Wait, weapon? What was in the needle he gave you?"

"Didn't use it. Since I didn't know if he was right, or even if he was Tony, I wasn't sure I could trust it. You ended up stabbing your doppleganger with it."

He made a faint snort, mouth twitching. "I like the irony. We need to find some where we can check if Tony was telling the truth."

True enough. If, somehow, the Skrull _had_ used that serum to do something heinous to her insides, their escape had just given him the first reason to actually use it. If he'd survived whatever he'd been injected with. Part of her hoped he hadn't. "All the public and government labs have been seized. Stark, Oracle, and Rand, too."

"Hn. What about the shadier ones? Some place like Oscorp?"

"Oh, you wouldn't have heard about _that_ either," she said, before continuing when he tilted his head questioningly in the brief pause. "He's Queen Veranke's personal consort."

" _Wha-_ Okay, Oscorp's out, too." He pushed himself up, beginning to pace as he thought, and she hid a small smile at the familiar behavior. God, it was almost _weird_ how much she'd missed the little quirks lately. "What about the house in Cresskill?" he asked finally. "I know that seems too simple a solution, but-"

"That might work, actually. The Skrull was... kind of odd about what he cribbed from you and what he didn't. Like, he claimed to have all your memories, and the lab I found you in was almost a direct replica of Yellowjacket's, and he insisted on keeping me around, but half the time, it was like... he was trying to _dismiss_ everything." He raised an eyebrow at her choice of wording, but she shook her head. She _really_ didn't want to talk about it. "So he could either have abandoned the house, have had it guarded, or have had it torn down. Any of the three is viable at this point."

"One out of three isn't the best odds, but better than nothing."

"And they might not count on us actually _trying_ to go someplace they might be keeping an eye on."

"Going out in the day's too risky. We could lay low here for some rest and try to get out of the city tomorrow night."

"That works," she said, then grinned at the embarrassed look that crossed his face when his stomach echoed the growl hers had made earlier. "Stay put, Blue Eyes. I'll go see about food."

He nodded, thinking about something, then snapped out of the reverie. "Oh, wait. I haven't finished those bandages."

Glancing over in a dusty mirror confirmed that, and she sighed tolerantly and let him get back to work.

 

***

 

Even though she'd checked for cameras, she felt awkward growing back to normal size in the closed restaurant, and not just because getting through the keyhole had been a tight fit. At least with the clothing, it had still been hers in a sense. _This_ was outright theft, and she'd never done that in her life. Absurdly, she wished she'd somehow been able to bring some money with her. At least then she could have left _something_ in return for the night's meal.

For now, though, she supposed there was nothing to be done for it. Raiding the massive fridge, she only took enough to keep them for the meal tonight and before they set out, then unlocked the door to let herself out.

Huh.

Still no alarm. Maybe it wasn't just her store, then. But this place certainly looked more lively... maybe she was just over thinking it. Setting down her burdens, she shrank down and slipped through the keyhole to re-lock the door, got out, and grabbed the food to run.

When she returned back to their hiding place, he'd used more bundles of clothing from the stockroom to fashion makeshift pallets for them both.

"Hey."

He started, almost missing catching the apple she lobbed at him. "Sorry," he said sheepishly. "Still a little on edge."

"Yeah, can't blame you there," she said, and they both settled onto their beds, the silence heavier than it had been in the sewer. He'd found some decoration candles somewhere, and she made a small spark to light them so he could turn off what little light they'd used. She shed the notebook she'd had hiding on her all this time, and though he glanced at it, he didn't question. ' _Later_ ' went unspoken, and she nodded in response to the look as they began eating.

"Thank you," he said quietly after several minutes, and she looked up in mid-bite. "Considering... _things_ , no one would have blamed you if you'd escaped on your own, but you still-"

"You'd have done the same." She -admittedly somewhat selfishly- hoped so, at least, and the faint smile strengthened that hope a bit. They went back to their food, the silence much less heavy, then burrowed in to sleep.

Long after he'd closed his eyes, however, she still lay awake, thinking. ' _The real one,_ ' she reminded herself for the umpteenth time, catching herself just as she was about to poke him to check...she didn't know what. He stirred in his sleep and, before she could pull her hand back, his nudged against it before taking hold. Finding she felt somewhat better, she relaxed and laced her fingers through his.

They'd get through this. Just as she'd told himself she'd find him before, she kept that in mind now. They had a plan to get out of here, even if it wasn't their best plan, and once they found the house... well, they'd manage. Somehow. There were other escapees banded together out there, she still had all her notes with her that could be useful, and if she could make them understand that the Skrulls had lied about Hank-

But that could wait, she decided, as the day's exhaustion finally began to catch up with her. For now, all that mattered was that she'd found him, they were out, and for now, they were safe. Still holding on to his hand, she leaned up and blew the candles out, then snuggled down into her bedding and closed her eyes.

She found that sleep came more easily than it had in a very long time.


End file.
